25 YEARS AGO ON AMBERGRIS
CAYE BY ANGEL NUÑEZ

Advertising

I
f you are advertising by means of the San Pedro Sun or Coral Cable
Vision you are perhaps using the best local advertising media. If you are
using the internet you are probably interested in international publicity.
And if you are placing posters on the street lamp post you are probably
reaching only 20 to 25 percent of your targeted public.

Now Little Italy and Lagoon Restaurants have small boards on the
streets, which are quite effective and very similar to advertising medium of
25 years ago. Let's take a close look at advertising in the 50's and 60's
and see if they were effective.

Funerals: These were very special. A funeral occurred once in a blue
moon, perhaps one every 3 or 4 years. For this occasion a very formal
invitation would be written and a friend would circulate this invitation
from house to house announcing the wake and time of the funeral. Mr.
Averiano Rivero, known to all his friends as Don Tach, was an avid volunteer
to carry the invitation to all the families, some 50 homes approximately.

Dances: These were advertised in two categories. Very special dances
like Christmas and New Year were done in the formal way, with a written
invitation carried from door to door or sometimes one would have the
patience to write by hand 40 to 50 invitations and distribute them to all
the homes. On the other hand, a dance was also advertised with a message
written on a 4x4 blackboard and three persons carried the blackboard around
the village. Two persons carried the blackboard and the third person rang a
bell as they paraded down the 2 streets, which consisted only of 5 blocks
from the Primary School corner to Hotel San Pedrano, and Back Street was
from Palace Casino to Mickey's Store. There were no houses beyond these points.

Religious Events: Processions, Novenas (nine nights of prayer sessions
dedicated to a particular saint) and other special church events were
advertised with the blackboard method.

Fairs: These also used the blackboard method. San Pedro High was the
first to introduce the banner method for a fair in 1973.

The Public Park Bulletin Board: Another very effective method of
advertising or making announcements was via the blackboard which was
permanently displayed under a small wooden palapa at the park. It was right
by the fence of the police station, in the park, and on Sundays the police
officer would play music via a small speaker hooked up under the palapa. All
public announcements were written there announcing the government nurses
coming with their purge or "purga", or the spraying against mosquitoes, or
the showing of a film documentary on health or the United Nations etc. Other
events occurring around the village could also be announced at the public
park. Would be great to have one there today, ain't it?

Now read carefully. BEL and BTL and all the rest of L's can learn from
this one. They all announce a payment date as a deadline or be disconnected
or put out of service. How did shopkeepers make public that they wanted to
collect arrears or bad debts. Don't laugh, but they wrote a notice with the
names of the bad debts and placed it at the front door. A typical notice
would read like this:

So what do you think? Could Lagoon Restaurant hire 2 kids to advertise
its board around town? And could BTL paste a computer print out of all its
bad debts right on its front door? Whatever you choose today, I tell you the
methods used 25 years ago did work and very effectively, especially the
"Malas Pagas" sign hung right on the shop door.